In several scenarios, one or more users may go through multiple revisions of a document to improve the content and presentability of the document contents. As a result of their being more than one user authorized to access and modify a document, other users may become confused when requesting to see a document if they are not aware that the document has changed and how. In doing so, a user may wish to compare a latest version of the document with a prior version to determine the changes that have been made to the latest version. Other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.
At least one embodiment of this invention pertains to a document management service that enables a user to request a document from the service to be delivered to a remote computer and have the service compare the last version of the document that the user accessed with the latest version and to deliver a display document showing those changes The document management service may run as a standalone service on a user's computing device or, in some instances, may run as a web service on a remote server. In either scenario, the document management service receives as input a request for particular document that a user wishes to see. The service determines whether the current version of the document supersedes the version of the document that the requesting user has previously seen. Subsequent to receiving the requests, the compare service generates a comparison document by identifying differences between the latest version of the document and the version that the requesting user has previously seen. The compare service delivers to the user's computer the comparison result. These and other objects, features and characteristics of the present invention will become more apparent to those skilled in the art from a study of the following detailed description in conjunction with the appended claims and drawings, all of which form a part of this specification. It should be understood that the description and specific examples are intended for purposes of illustration only and not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.